Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe

by Ulinka Rublack

Dressing Up shows why clothes made history and history can be about clothes. It imagines the Renaissance afresh by considering people's what they wore, how this made them move, what images they created, and how all this made people feel about themselves.

Using an astonishing array of sources, Ulinka Rublack argues that an appreciation of people's relationship to appearances and images is essential to an understanding of what it meant to live at this time - and ever since. We read about the head accountant of a sixteenth-century merchant firm who commissioned 136 images of himself elaborately dressed across a lifetime; students arguing with their mother about which clothes they could have; or Nuremberg women wearing false braids dyed red or green.

This brilliantly illustrated book draws on a range of insights across the disciplines and allows us to see an entire period in new ways. In integrating its findings into larger arguments about consumption, visual culture, the Reformation, German history, and the relationship of European and global history, it promises to re-shape the field.

Genres: History, Fashion, Nonfiction, Renaissance, European History, 16th Century, Fashion History

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 28, 2010

About the author

Ulinka Rublack is Professor at the University of Cambridge and has published widely on early modern European history as well as approaches to history. She edited the Oxford Concise Companion to History (2011), and, most recently, the Oxford Handbook of the Protestant Reformation (2016). Her monographs include Reformation Europe (2005), The Crimes of Women in Early Modern Germany (1999), and Dressing Up: Cultural Identity in Renaissance Europe (2010), which won the Roland H. Bainton Prize.

Reviews

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Matthäus Schwarz was an interesting man. In his lifetime, this successful Augsberg, Germany, merchant commissioned a series of 136 watercolours to be painted of him. It all started in 1520 on his 23rd birthday to make a record of his clothing -- and he ordered 28 retrospective portraits to be painted dating back to when his mother was pregnant with him -- and up to his 23rd birthday. He commented on what he was wearing -- and we learned about his life as well, for example, the fact that he survived the measles. He continued these commissions for the rest of his life, and The Book of Clothes, as the collection of paintings with comments is now known, is a priceless historical publication documenting changing German fashion over one man’s lifetime. We’re able to see the colours used, the slashes in the fabric and the jewellery and other accessories Schwarz favoured -- and he favoured what was fashionable at the time. We observe him dressed in black funeral attire for a friend’s funeral in 1560, and Schwarz’ own comments noting the contrast between that garb and the bright red and gold silks he’d worn to the same man’s wedding in 1527.
Ulinka Rublack begins Dressing Up with a focus on Schwarz, who indeed has left behind an amazing book through which to study 16th-century male German clothing. The price of the book is worth it for that section alone, which includes numerous colour plates from The Book of Clothes. However, Rublak continues her study to focus on the look of religion, which isn’t just about what religious authorities wore -- she also examines religious rules regarding clothing and how changes in religion changed what one wore. For example, stripes are worthy of study. They were disliked by moralisers in the early Reformation. In Germany, they were associated with Landsquenets and Swiss Guards, hangmen often were forced to wear them, yet the wealthy felt they were fashionable because they followed expensive Italian styles. Go figure.
Additionally, she examines the growth of German national dress and how it was influenced by other cultures. There are chapters on ‘Bourgeois Tastes” (wouldn’t it be nice to be a Nuremberg artisan who “received from his wife a wedding shirt with a gold-embroidered collar”?) and “Clothes and Consumers”. One section of the “Bourgeois Tastes” chapter actually concerns home furnishing as it discusses doll’s houses dating back to the late 16th and 17th centuries, completed with photographs of surviving ones.
Whilst Rublack’s overall focus is on German Renaissance dress and its cultural identity, this book should be of much interest to anyone interested in European clothing from that time period. And with 151 colour pictures of clothing from both books (some rare, such as The Book of Clothes)and museum collections, there’s not only a lot of prose to read, but there are a number of pictures to peruse.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

raises so many problems and questions that I never knew existed.

absolutely baller book.

[Mindy aka serenity · Rating 3 out of 5]

Throughout the Renaissance, clothing was not just the act of covering oneself; it was an art form that represented social status to identity, and to affiliation. Clothes were used as a method of communication without words, allowing people to discern certain “truths” of you at first glance. In Dressing Up, Rublack outlines the many ways that appearance was significant to not just the wearer but also the observer in this time period. She cites the increase of mass production and subsequent consumption changing how people thought about clothes, in some cases prompting sumptuary laws that dictated what one should buy and wear according to their station.
Rublack has selected Germany as her focus for several reasons, such as availability of primary resources that uniquely provide a visual portrait of daily lives, but also to dispel the general opinion that the Germans were dour and colorless during this time period, not adding much to the brightening cultural landscape of Europe during this time. In fact, based on books and letters from this period, that opinion is quite wrong. Germans indeed loved color and even the Lutherans, who are known for their rejection of excess and embellishment, were still part of the Renaissance, incorporating fine clothes as a kind of reward or to establish distinction (Martin Luther often wore red for this purpose).
Clothing became a “powerful agent of change” during the transition from the Medieval to the Renaissance, notes Rublack, due to an increase of fabric choices and colors. These choices led to a change in clothing styles. Rublack utilizes the “Book of Clothes” that bookkeeper Matthäus Schwarz created to chronicle what was essentially his life story through what he wore as a guide for showing this change. The book consists of drawings Schwarz commissioned from local artists to depict his dress through a large portion of his life, primarily when he was a fashionable, unmarried young man. It is full of symbolism- for example, one drawing depicts him standing on a fool’s hat, which with the help of his accompanying commentary we know to mean that he was ready to give up the life of a frolicking “fool” and settle down into maturity. This chapter (2) is interspersed with pictures of individual pages, which help the reader to not just visualize but see the connections Rublack is making with her book to larger issues, such as the mental and political shifts of the Renaissance that influenced a change in how clothing was perceived, as well as the increasing prevalence of using clothing to define one’s identity and self-perception.
The third chapter turns to religion and clothing as seen through the eyes of the Reformation. Catholics to Lutherans were the embodiment of all that was wrong with the church- lavish extravagance, especially in what they wore. While Catholics believed that rich clothing for the clergy is a symbol of the divine on earth and their holy station, Luther claimed that clothes did not make the man more holy or more special. However this wasn’t entirely true in practice- as stated above Luther wore red to distinguish himself as a prophet, incorporating the Renaissance ideal of “civil decorousness.” A good Protestant could balance his clothing choices between extravagance and austerity and be completely accepted. The point was to show wisdom and dignity through what they wore.
The next chapters depict clothing as a symbol of one’s nationalistic identity. Clothes distinguished people from other regions and grouped people together to form an image that could be used as an example of what people in different regions wore. Clothing images decided what region was considered more moral than another by their style. Rublack makes the point that perhaps establishing a German clothing identity was part of the protestation of foreign rule. Travel outside Germany is discussed as a growing phenomenon during this time, debunking opinions of German “narrowness” and instead showing an objective interest in other cultures.
In sum, I believe the author has depicted “the versatility of visual communication and its connection with the presence of images” well. Portraits and written commentaries about them have shown that the use of imagery was helpful to people of the Renaissance for showing diversity of their society outwardly and how they perceived themselves inwardly. It gives many examples of the incorrect opinion that Germans were firmly stuck in the old days which were colorless and dour. Wearing clothes that were not ostentatious but still fine was no longer considered an act of vanity, but instead valued for their symbolism of class, status, and affiliation. They placed Germany in a more global context through imagery by allowing comparison and commentary between cultures. As Erasmus said, clothes were “the body’s body,” not just a covering but a way of life.

[Allison Thurman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not just who wore what then, but what 16th century Germans (well known and not) thought about what they wore and used clothing as a means of expressing identity (personal and national) and status. It's fairly dense but worth the time. Especially intriguing were the plates from the Matthau Schwartz's watercolor book, documenting his clothing throughout his life, and accounts of first exposure to people and goods from the New World.

[carelessdestiny · Rating 5 out of 5]

I never would have thought one could look at history through clothing in such a complex way, which made it an engrossing reading experience.